& Sons

Successful drama demands dynamism, energy, friction, propulsion, and despite a lot of shouting and crying and accusing, this film feels bloodless. Fatally.

The result is stilted, laborious, nebulous and, while the performances are all committed, and watching Nighy and Staunton in anything will never exactly be time wasted, I couldn’t buy any of it.

While lapses into awkwardness can be forgiven, the problem with & Sons is fundamental: not the absence of realism, but the absence of a world it is possible to believe in.

The problem is that the handling of this plot twist...becomes so convoluted that & Sons never reaches its intended destination. [Full review in Spanish]